even to the most repulsive among them
Perhaps this statement is meant to remind us that, though Victor was
originally repelled by the "repulsive countenance" of Krempe, the
chemistry professor at the University of Ingolstadt (see 1.2.5), in time he came to treasure "his
sound sense and real information," however much he was still aware of
their being "combined . . . with a respulsive physiognomy" (1.3.1). Obviously, however, what Victor
can tolerate in a human constrained by the normative boundaries of
inherited genetic combination he is unwilling to extend to his Creature,
who is a being of whom, from the first, he claimed "no mortal could
support the horror of that countenance" (1.4.3), a being who himself, upon first
seeing his reflection, "started back" from his "miserable deformity" (2.4.5). Victor's magnanimous
identification with his fellow beings collapses here under the weight of
the ironies of a categorical discrimination he seems unable to comprehend.
